WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) has cosponsored the Electronic Communications Privacy Act Amendments Act (S.607), bipartisan legislation to protect the privacy of American citizens online by updating the privacy protections for electronic communications stored by third-party service providers – including email and social media services. The importance of updating the privacy protections was recently underscored by an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) claim that American Internet users “do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy” when it comes to their emails being accessed by the government. 

“Americans have a constitutionally protected right to privacy that no one, including the IRS, may take away,” Sen. Moran said. “Our electronic communications privacy laws need to be updated to reflect that fact. These outdated laws, designed in the era of floppy disks, do not make sense in an era of cloud computing, when users essentially have infinite storage online. Americans rightfully expect their private communications to be protected from intrusion, especially by government bureaucrats. S. 607 will affirm Americans’ right to privacy and help bring this 1980s law into the 21st Century.”

Documents released in April as part of a Freedom of Information Act request show that in 2009, the Criminal Tax Division at the IRS claimed in an internal handbook that in general “the Fourth Amendment does not protect communications held in electronic storage, such as email messages stored on a server.”

Congress has not addressed federal email privacy laws since 1986, before the home computers and email were widely used and before the advent of Facebook, Twitter, Gmail and cloud computing transformed our lives. S. 607 would make certain the Fourth Amendment privacy protections Americans receive from regular mail and other paper documents are extended to electronic correspondence and content, including cloud computing, email, and other online services. The bill establishes a search warrant requirement before government agencies – such as the IRS – may obtain the content of Americans’ emails and other electronic communications, when those communications are stored with a third-party service provider including Gmail, Yahoo!, wireless providers or cloud storage platforms. The bill also eliminates the outdated “180-day” rule that calls for different legal standards for the government to obtain email content depending upon the age of an email, and it requires that the government notify an individual whose electronic communications have been disclosed within 10 days of obtaining a search warrant.

S. 607 is the Senate Companion to the Email Privacy Act (H.R. 1852) introduced in the House by Congressman Kevin Yoder, which recently reached 228 cosponsors. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act Amendments Act has already been passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

By KHI NEWS SERVICE

TOPEKA — Kansas welfare officials said today that they have suspended placing foster children with TFI Family Services, pending investigation of the death Thursday of an infant left in a hot car in Wichita.

TFI formerly contracted with the Kansas Department for Children and Families to provide foster services and continues to have foster homes as a subcontractor to the state’s current lead foster care contractors, KVC Behavioral Healthcare of Olathe and St. Francis Community Services of Salina.

DCF officials said they had asked KVC and St. Francis to inspect all foster homes associated with TFI following the death of the 10-month-old girl who had been left unattended in a car for up to 2.5 hours, according to early news reports of statements by Wichita police.

The Wichita Eagle reported today that a 29-year-old Wichita man had been taken into custody on suspicion of aggravated endangerment following the incident.

“I am absolutely devastated by this child’s death that should have been prevented,” said DCF Secretary Phyllis Gilmore in a prepared statement. “DCF is working closely with local law enforcement and the Sedgwick County District Attorney to ensure that justice is served and that the integrity of the investigation is not compromised by the release of confidential information.”

Topeka-based TFI’s contract was not renewed in July 2013, according to DCF officials. It is still allowed to sponsor foster homes, but future placements have been suspended pending the outcome of DCF’s investigation of the circumstances of the girl’s death.

The number of children in foster care in Kansas recently hit a record high.

 KANSAS CITY- A Missouri man was injured in a Friday afternoon motorcycle accident in Wyandotte County.

The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2005 Suzuki motorcycle driven by Christopher R. Johnson, Kansas City, Mo., was westbound on Interstate 70 just east of 5^th Street.

The motorcycle ran over lose gravel or sand in the roadway, the driver lost control and struck the outside barrier wall.

 

Johnson was not wearing a helmet and was transported to KU Medical Center.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts has intensified his television advertising ahead of the Republican primary to run a new spot highlighting a state medical board investigation of tea party challenger Milton Wolf.

The new ad began airing statewide Friday as part of what Roberts’ said was a $350,000 push before the Aug. 5 election. Wolf spokesman Ben Hartman called the ad misleading.

The Topeka Capital-Journal reported this week that the medical board is investigating Wolf over his past postings of graphic X-ray images on a personal Facebook page. The newspaper said it received a letter from a board attorney, asking it to share information in its possession about the postings.

Wolf is a Leawood radiologist and acknowledged posting the X-ray images and dark humor commentary in 2010. He apologized publicly.

 

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Gov. Sam Brownback says he’s stunned by Kansas Supreme Court decisions overturning the death sentences of two brothers for a December 2000 robbery, rape and kidnapping spree that ended with four fatal shootings in Wichita field.

Brownback said Friday that the decisions in the cases of Jonathan and Reginald Carr unnecessarily reopen the wounds from what he called a tragic moment in Wichita history.

In overturning the death sentences, the court’s majority said the brothers should have had separate sentencing proceedings to determine whether they faced lethal injection or life in prison. The court also overturned three of each man’s four capital murder convictions.

Brownback called the crimes brutal and heinous and said the Carrs were convicted by a jury of their peers before an elected trial-court judge.

 

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator and former Missouri State Auditor Claire McCaskill today shone a spotlight on a federal agency performing duplicative services and escaping accountability—an agency McCaskill is working with a Republican colleague to abolish.

McCaskill’s hearing focused on the National Technical Information Service (NTIS), as she questioned whether the agency’s mission of compiling and selling government reports—many of which are available online—to other federal agencies and to the public, continues to be viable in the internet age.

McCaskill, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Financial & Contracting Oversight, also grilled witnesses on how the agency allows private companies to provide services for the federal government for payment, apparently acting as a pass-through to avoid the scrutiny and rules that apply to formal federal contracts. These services are also already available to federal agencies through individual contracts or the General Services Administration.

“NTIS has been trying to profit by selling documents that have little, if anything to do with scientific or technical information, like the Armed Forces Recipe Book and even my colleague Dr. Coburn’s Wastebook, which actually includes NTIS as a prime example of wasteful government,” McCaskill said at the hearing. “Both of these documents are, of course, available for free online and easy to find with a quick search. The questions these examples raise, of course, are why anyone would buy publications from NTIS when they are available for free elsewhere on the Internet?”

Click HERE for photos of today’s hearing.

While NTIS remains the only permanent repository for scientific and technical reports, its library services have largely been made obsolete by the Internet. Approximately 74 percent of the reports NTIS archived between 1990 and 2011 were readily available from other websites and 95 percent of those were available free of charge.

McCaskill recently joined Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma—who also participated in today’s hearing—to introduce the Let Me Google That For You Act, a bipartisan, bicameral bill to eliminate NTIS. With a money-losing profit model, NTIS has been selling other services to government agencies, all of which are offered by other federal agencies for lower fees.

McCaskill continued: “There are important questions to discuss about the NTIS and its future. But they represent even more important questions about our government. Can we as a Congress come together and cut bureaucracy where it is obsolete and duplicative? I’m hopeful, because Dr. Coburn and I have come together to cosponsor bipartisan legislation, the Let Me Google That For You Act that would begin to address some of these problems at NTIS.”

The Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee also recently approved a bipartisan McCaskill-backed bill to eliminate unnecessary reports compiled by federal government agencies. In December 2012, the Office of Management and Budget published a list of 376 Congressionally mandated reports identified as outdated, duplicative, or serving little use.

LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — A 41-year-old Lawrence man has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for raping a University of Kansas student in 1997.

The Lawrence Journal-World reports  Robert E. Grey was sentenced Friday to the least amount of time possible under Kansas sentencing guidelines. He was convicted in a retrial in May for raping a 20-year-old university junior.

The new sentence is 16 months shorter than one issued after Grey’s first conviction in 2009. A Kansas Court of Appeals panel awarded Grey a retrial last year after finding that prosecutorial misconduct deprived him of a fair trial the first time.

The case went cold for years until authorities linked a fingerprint found on the victim’s car to Grey.

Grey has already served nearly seven years, which will count toward time served.

 

SEDALIA (AP) – Authorities have been searching for an inmate who escaped from the Pettis County jail.

The Sedalia Democrat reports that 29-year-old Brandon McGee, of Sedalia, escaped from the jail late Thursday by dismantling shower room equipment and escaping through the hole into a service corridor that led to an exit.

Pettis County Sheriff Kevin Bond says he escaped while staff were preparing for the nightly lockdown.

McGee was described as a white male, 5-feet-9-inches tall, 130 pounds with brown eyes, brown hair and a goatee. He was being held on a charge of fraudulent use of a credit device.